My blog has traveled around the world as I have transferred from country to country with Peace Corps. I spent 6 months in Guinea teaching chemistry and physics but had to leave when the Guinea program was suspended due to political unrest. I spent about a month in Mali and then transferred to Burkina Faso. I was a math teacher. I have now transferred to Asia and am an English teacher at a university. This will be my sixth and last year in Peace Corps.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

As a young girl, my favorite food was Chinese dumplings called jiaozi.

Here in China, it is one of the first words Americans learn, an easy dish to order at a restaurant. We only soon realize that restaurants don't serve jiaozi. You have to find the special hole in the wall places that sell dumplings and noodles.

Today, my family left the house early to go to the market to find the freshest vegetables on the day when veggies disappear quick, a Sunday full of thousands of shoppers. The market is such an interesting lively place full of wriggling eels, huge frogs, plucked geese being blow torched, peaches, and watermelon and hundreds of other food goods. We bought bak choy, dried tofu, green onions, eggs, thousand year old duck eggs, ground pork, cucumbers, and jiaozi wraps.

Freshly made jiaozi wraps! Yay! Dumplings for lunch.

It was super fun watching my Chinese host mother make dumplings and helping her stuff and squeeze them shut. I did a good job coz none of mine broke open when placed in the boiling water. I was proud and was rewarded with a tummy full of the most delicious things ever.

For dinner the ingredients we bought became a cucumber and thousand year old duck egg soup, a bak choy stir fry, a dried tofu and green onions stir fry, and jiaozi leftover from today's lunch that was rewarmed by deep frying. Yum yum!!!

I am excited about learning how to cook Chinese food.I shall invite you to Chinese meal when I get back to the states.